Cold Mage
by TheZorker
Summary: Director Fury is assassinated, and Captain America stands accused. Anna and Elsa Arendelle, newly minted members of SHIELD, have the chilling feeling that they could be next. Sixth Story in the Cryomancy series.
1. Chapter 1

( _A/N: Once again, don't start here! This is the Sixth story in the ongoing Cryomancy series! Start at the beginning, which you can find through my profile page. And, as always, thanks for reading!)_

It was still a far cry from the penthouse that Elsa had lived in when she'd first arrived, more or less, in the 21st century. It was _certainly_ nothing like the castle she'd grown up in. And yet, the two bedroom apartment, just a stone's throw from the Maryland border, felt more like a home. She now lived with her sister, in a way they hadn't done since they were children, and with them even closer than then.

There were days when Elsa wondered what it would have been like if she had never entombed herself in the Arendelle Glacier. If she had continued to be a queen in her own time, never knowing about the things that would come in the future, she would have... she would have. She didn't know. It was something she tried not to think about, but it popped up in her head anyway.

She stared at the most recent cypher she'd been tasked at solving. Which was fine, she liked puzzles, but she hadn't managed to decode this one yet. Both cyphers and the messages were making both Elsa and her sister very nervous. They were a combination of suggestions to "Get to know" their fellow agents, combined with paranoia about how not to trust anyone, including Agent Sitwell.

 _Especially_ Agent Sitwell. He was the one who set her these assignments. She was supposed to crack this one before he got back from his special assignment at 'The Hub', and preferably as soon as possible.

Anna had gone for a run, probably down by the Smithsonian. Possibly to test herself against Captain Rodgers, though Elsa tried to convince her sister that the comparison wasn't good for her psyche. After all, if there was one thing Elsa understood, it was putting impossible demands on one's self.

Elsa stared out the window at the Washington DC skyline. It had only been... what? Nine months since Anna had been freed from the ice? Maybe a bit more than a year for Elsa? But for all the changes, it might have been a lifetime ago. She could still remember thinking that she'd been condemned to hell when she'd woken up n that desert. She shoved the thoughts aside, and returned to work on the cypher.

It was longer than the previous assignments. This, in theory, should have made it easier to solve. Maybe it had some sort of double lock to it? Her notepad had become a mess of jumbled words and phrases, and she was staring at it. "What did it all have in common?" She asked herself. But she could think of nothing. There was nothing in English in common...

"Sitwell, you nut!" Elsa exclaimed aloud. What if it was a code for another language? Like Norsk? With this fresh idea, she threw herself back into code breaking. As it turned out, that was the answer. It still wasn't a complex code – cypher – she corrected herself, but unless you could read and write Norsk, one didn't have a prayer of solving it. But since she wasn't versed in Modern Norsk, she ran into other problems, she had to turn to an online dictionary to figure out what some of the words meant.

She didn't even like computers that much, Anna liked them more than she did. That wasn't true... Anna liked games. Anna liked to be challenged. She liked games that she could improve on. She said that "match three" gem game relaxed her. She also liked her stories, which was why she stuck to that silly horror series. Panicking after one such scream from her sister, Elsa had taken to demanding to know _before_ Anna started to try to survive more nights.

Her sister came in as she was muddling through the translation. Anna had also changed since arriving in the twenty first century. Not emotionally, of course. Elsa didn't want to think what kind of catastrophe could change Anna emotionally. But the training they'd had over the past several months had changed her, had changed both of them. Elsa was no longer the woman who would get tired just jogging a few city blocks. Anna, well, still hadn't forgotten how she'd embarrassed herself in front of Kristov at the North Mountain in Arendelle. She'd thrown herself into every physical activity that either Natasha Romanov or Tony "Task" Masters could think up, and it was beginning to really show. Anna had been thin before, the ideal, in the past. But it certainly wasn't Anna's ideal now, she was a bit a larger all over her frame, and she was proud of it.

"So," Elsa said, "Was Steve there?"

Anna shook her head. "No," she said. She looked over at the table where Elsa was working. "Let me clean up, and I'll join you."

"I've gotten most of it," Elsa told her. "Same old Sitwell. I swear he's fully intent on making us paranoid."

"More of the 'Learn about your fellow agents, but don't trust them...' ilk?"

"Mostly. There's some banter in the middle, which I think he just added to make it easier to translate. This last part's different, though. It says that 'Report compromised. Insight data on the Lemurian Star. Recommend'..." she frowned. "GB?"

"Initials maybe?" Anna suggested. "Or maybe it represents something else?"

"Possibly," Elsa agreed. "And then it lists a number. Ten digits."

"Phone number with an area code. We've seen that before, " Anna said. "Going to call it?"

"I think we have to. Maybe he's timing us," Elsa pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number. "Hmph. Voice mail," Elsa grumbled, rolling her eyes. She gave the requested message, then hung up the phone. "That was exciting," Elsa complained. "Now what?"

"Well, if you're looking for some excitement..." Anna began, slyly.

Elsa looked at her grinning sister for a long time before responding with the single word of "No."

Anna gave her a mock look of dejection. "Let me clean up, then maybe lunch?"

"Lunch sounds good."

* * *

They didn't have the next day off, but as they walked into the Triskelion, both of their cell phones went off simultaneously. They looked at each other before taking them out. The message was brief and to the point. "Come and see me in my office. N.J. Fury."

Elsa stared at the message. "Did... did we do something wrong?" she asked tentatively.

Anna was already a third of the way down the long lobby toward the elevators. She clearly thought she was going to be given some kind of special mission, and couldn't wait to hear about it. Elsa gave her oblivious sister a hard look, then jogged to catch up with her.

Anna had an elevator open already, and was positively impatient for Elsa to catch up. After the doors closed, Anna looked up and almost shouted her enthusiasm. "Director's office!"

"Arendelle, E and Arendelle, A approved for special meeting at Director's office," said the cool mechanical voice.

"Did you hear that?" Anna asked, bouncing in place. "A special meeting!"

"I heard," Elsa told her, a lot more soberly. "Anna, this isn't necessarily a good thing."

For a moment, Anna glared at her sister. "It's also not necessarily a bad thing!" Anna said, crossing her arms, refusing to let Elsa's cautiousness dampen her enthusiasm.

"Relax!" Both of them said together. There was a brief pause and both of them processed the timing, and then they both smiled.

For a change, nobody interrupted the elevator trip up to the office. Or maybe Fury had some sort of special code that kept people destined for his office from being stopped along the way. In Elsa's opinion, this was a fantastic power to be earned at almost any cost.

When the elevator's doors opened, the girls stepped into Fury's office, they found him already in discussion. Fury looked past his other guest to the girls, then back at the agent sitting in front of his desk.

They had a moment to look around the wide open office. Windows filled two side of it, the sunlight giving it an almost ironic feeling of openness and airiness. The home of the premier spy in the United States, and probably the world. A large monitor took up the third wall. The desk sat near the windows, covered with folders, reports, its computer, and a coffee cup. One still couldn't shake the feeling that Fury knew exactly where everything was, though.

"So, that's the upshot, Director. This ISO-8 would probably be an incredible source of power... I mean, it still is, but it's rarer than vibranium. So it's not worth worrying about." A folder was pushed across the desk.

"Thank you, Agent," Fury said. "You can go. I see my next appointment is here."

The agent bowed without a word, stood, and nodded to the girls. A moment later, the elevator clanked open, and they were alone with the director.

Fury stood from behind his desk, walking towards the sisters. "Now," he began without preamble, "I received some recommendations from Agent Sitwell before he went off to the Hub."

Elsa could feel herself freeze under the scrutiny of that one eye. She had thought he'd looked like a pirate a year ago, and that gaze had grown no less imposing. Anna had reigned in her excitement to appear earnest, yet calm.

"Neither of you are really suitable for undercover work. Not that this is a surprise, you're both far too recognizable, not to mention you'll always have a telltale accent." He turned to Elsa. "You have been showing remarkable progress with your natural talents. But you're still dependent on your bracers. That needs to change. That starts right now. Turn them off."

Elsa turned rigid, her eyes locked into Fury's single visible eye with a look that was pleadingly desperate. She simply could not trust herself not to lose control. The bracers had become part of her, and she had accepted them. He knew, right? He knew what had happened before she had them... right?

Anna could see her eyes widen, and without taking her eyes off Fury, gave her sister's hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Now, Elsa. Lift them up so I can see them. That's an order."

Slowly, almost snail like, Elsa lifted her right arm, and deactivated the bracer on it. Then the left bracer.

Anna didn't need to see when Elsa deactivated the second bracer. She could feel it. The temperature dropped immediately. The air conditioner clicked off in confusion. She could hear Elsa's breath quicken. She dropped the pretense, and took her sister's hand in her own, trying to give out the willpower she needed to control the fear and doubt.

Fury said nothing. He was waiting for something. Maybe the heat to turn on.

After a few minutes, the temperature slowly began to return to normal.

"A good start," Fury said. He turned to Anna, "As for you, you need to realize when you're outmatched. Sometimes the task's going to be too difficult, and you need to be ready to admit it and go around, or get out of dodge."

Anna nodded, but her eyes displayed their mutiny.

"But that's not why I asked you here. You haven't followed followed a standard SHIELD agent path to start with, throwing yourselves directly into the fire back in New York, so why start now? I'm putting you onto the active roster, effective immediately, Level two. That doesn't mean you're actively on assignment. It also doesn't mean you're going to slack off on your training. If anything, it's going to get harder."

His eye met Anna's. "That also starts now. You wanted new challenges? You'll get some. You're spending today in the training simulators. We're going to teach you to fly everything from our new barges to the Quinjets."

Elsa could see the stars in her sister's eyes.

"As for you," Fury continued, turning back to Elsa, "We're ramping up the training a bit more, but you've already got something you're working on."

The temperature dropped a few degrees in acknowledgment.

"That's it, for now," Fury told them. "Anna, you're to report to Natasha at the sims. She's requested this," Fury said. "Elsa? Mr. Masters is waiting for you. Dismissed."

They turned and headed back to the elevator when Fury spoke up. "Oh, and one more thing. Elsa?" She paused and turned back to him. "Good job on those cyphers."

"How did he know that?" Anna asked on the way down.


	2. Chapter 2

Elsa had been kind of relieved that Tony was her first stop of the day. Tony "Task" Masterson wasn't an easy going instructor, but he was a professional. It was here she practiced using her own powers, so the bracers were going to be turned off anyway. She set up in the center of the holographic arena, and prepared to assault the holographic Chitauri, bandits, or whatever else that Taskmaster had concocted this week.

When Tony called a halt to that training and told her they were to spend the next hour with hand to hand, that's when Elsa felt the fear return. It would have been easy to turn the bracers again, but she'd been ordered to turn them off, and leave them off, right?

"I know it's normally Natasha who does your hand to hand training, but she's busy with your sister today in the flight simulator. "Besides," he smirked, "Not everyone fights the same way. It'll be good to fight a new opponent. Let's see if you live up to dossier." He nodded to some gloves and helmet sitting on a table.

Elsa started. She was... OK at hand to hand, maybe. Anna had taken to it with enthusiasm. Not Elsa. Still, orders were orders, and she went to get the equipment. He set his feet, and met her eyes. And a moment later he threw a punch, which Elsa dodged easily. A few maneuvers later, when she bit upon a feint, a blindingly obvious feint, and went down to the mat, Taskmaster did not say anything about it. When he looked her directly in the eye, and said they'd try again, she knew that he knew something wasn't right.

The second time she bit on the same feint, something they both knew she was better than, he sent her tumbling again. When she rose slowly back to her feet, then he did say something. His tone was even. "I really shouldn't be upset, you know, I get paid no matter what happens here, and I've trained some pretty hopeless cases. You should have seen some of the scum the Maggia brought in. But you?" His face broke out in a scowl."You're better than that, and you and I both have seen that. You act like this in a combat situation... and even that Maggia scum is going to end you."

He broke of his rant, not because Elsa was trembling (she was), but he because he'd gotten an answer to the question he hadn't actually asked. Snow was beginning to form in the training room. "So. Fury ordered you to turn off the bracers, didn't he?"

Elsa looked down at the floor. But if she was looking for sympathy, she certainly didn't find any from her taskmaster. "I figured there wasn't any chance you'd turn them off for your own self improvement." Elsa heard him snort. "Look at me!" he demanded.

Elsa looked up, her breath quickening as she felt her magic spiraling further and further out of control.

"Where's the confidence that had been building in you?" Taskmaster said, his voice still even. "Gone with the magic feather, I guess. I think I know what your problem is. After all this time, you still don't trust yourself. You still think you're some unnatural monstrosity that needs to be locked away, behind closed doors. Or with your powers controlled. You can't just bring yourself to trust that you won't someday destroy the world. Who do you think you are, the Hulk?"

It may have been intended as a joke, but it didn't come off as one. There was too much truth behind the words. Just because the damage she caused wasn't physical in nature didn't make them any less catastrophic. Elsa closed her eyes tightly, picturing the frozen destruction of Arendelle.

"Hit close to home, huh? Hmm. Poor choice of words. No. Really. Look at me." When Elsa failed to open her eyes, Taskmaster's tone changed. "I said open them!" he snapped.

In shock, Elsa did so, immediately registering the condition of the training room, the projectors covered in frost, ice coating the floor, spreading out around her feet. "I.. I can't control it!" she said, the desperation setting in.

The words that Taskmaster replied with were not suitable for reprinting in polite company. "You'd better. Because if these things break because of your magic, it'll be you explaining it to Fury, not me. Maybe I'll get him on the phone right now. Or maybe you'll remember just how you controlled them to bring your homeland out of the deep freeze. Now you have permission to close your eyes and focus on that!"

It was the tone of those words that snapped Elsa out of the panic that had set in.

"Now, deep breaths," Taskmaster had dropped the drill sergeant voice, and gone back to his perfectly even teacher's voice. This was probably for the best. The commanding tone worked well enough for the shock value, but Elsa had never really gotten used to taking orders from anyone. Tactical advice, yes, but not orders. Elsa took those deep breaths, focusing on the darkness itself. She could almost feel her heartbeat slowing along, and the sense of panic went down with it.

"Better," Taskmaster said after about a minute. "Now. You've controlled it before. How'd you do it then?"

How had she done it then? How had brought Arendelle finally out of the glacier? She didn't actually know. It had thawed just after the battle of New York, but that's all she knew. Her memory of rescuing Anna was much more clear. She had just seen that video Skye had shown her, about the kids she had saved. That triggered another memory, Phil Coulson telling her that the opposite of the fear, the fear she had, wasn't courage but hope.

And, in that instant, she knew she could control it. It'd be cliché to call it love, though that was part of it. It was that feeling from helping people, from saving people. From hope. Hope for her own future, and the hope she inspired in others. There was a warmth to that. She could internalize her cold magic, and disperse it with that warmth.

"Huh," Taskmaster said, "That actually worked."

Elsa's eyes flew open. The frost was gone, the floor as dry as when she'd walked in. She stared in amazement. To see proof of that control was thrilling. She closed her eyes again, "I can do it. Not just once. I can." she whispered.

"Yeah. You can," Taskmaster said, smirking. "Right now. But you're not turning those bracers back on. C'mon." He adopted his stance again. "I remember where we were, even if you don't. Let's see if you can maintain that control, and still do what you need to do."

At first, it was harder, much harder. Elsa was trying to hold onto those hopeful, happy memories, and at the same time, still trying to remember everything she'd learned from Taskmaster and Natasha, and that was just too much.

After the fifth or sixth time Taskmaster had thrown her to the ground, he stepped back. Elsa climbed back to her feet, now really sore, but still somewhat proud her magic hadn't leaked again.

"Wipe that smile off your face, Elsa," Taskmaster told her. "It's no good controlling your magic if you can't actually perform in the field."

Elsa grimaced. He was right.

"I suspect you're over thinking this," Taskmaster continued. "Focus on defending yourself. Don't worry about your magic. It's when you get worried about it that it flares up around you. So, the simple advice? Act like your bracer was still on."

The advice may have sounded simple, but it was more complex than that. Elsa found it next to impossible to follow. Trying not to think about it was still thinking about it, and even when she tried to focus her mind completely on her martial arts instructions, her mind kept going back to trying to recapture the emotion she needed to reign in her magic. Before she knew it, she was lying on her back, again.

"Going to give up?" Taskmaster asked.

"No. Anna would never forgive me," Elsa said. "I'll get this." She pushed herself to her feet for what seemed like the umpteenth time. "Let's go again."

"Knew you weren't a quitter," Taskmaster said, a hint of a genuine smile on his face. "Focus on my hands..."

* * *

Anna almost flew out of the elevator, and almost right into a rather distracted looking Steven Rodgers. They'd patched things up since their first meeting in New York, kind of. Elsa had looked up to him, but Anna... well, if Anna had to admit to herself, she was envious. She wanted to help people badly, and while Elsa had been born with magic that was both a kiss and a curse, she could not see a downside to Steve's abilities. With that said, from what she'd learned from the Howling Commandos exhibit, she could see more than a few parallels between herself and Steve.

Those parallels pushed her to train even harder. "Good morning, Captain," Anna said.

Steve looked up, clearly actually noticing Anna for the first time. Anna could tell immediately that Steve was in a bad mood. Not only had she gotten better at reading people (and the fact that most people were not nearly as good at disguising their actual emotions as Hans was), but being in a bad mood seemed almost foreign for the Captain. He faced his enemies with the same, almost dispassionate, focus. If he'd ever gotten angry, really angry, she couldn't remember it.

"Oh, good morning, Anna. I'm doing fine," Steve had put on the worst fake smile. Anna's only response was to raise an eyebrow and give him a hard look. "OK, I'm upset," he admitted. "But it's mission related, and I can't talk about with you." He stepped into the elevator. "Director's office." he told it.

"Well, fine," Anna said, to no one in particular, determined not to let the Captain spoil her good mood. She continued down the maze of corridors, ending in a large room, containing two large training simulators, both elevated from the ground by four legs. Natasha Romanov was waiting for her, holding a depressingly large book.

Natasha gave her a friendly grin, glanced at the manual in her hand, and unceremoniously dropped it to he floor. "I think people learn better by doing."

"I agree," Anna said, subconsciously rubbing the bruises Natasha had given her during the last training session.

"Excellent. You can take that home with you to read up on it, but for the moment, get in simulator B. I think your first crash will be spectacular. I was watching when you learned to drive."

Anna excitedly walked to the simulator device marked B when what Natasha said impacted her brain. "Wait... what?" Anna said, suddenly surprised.

Natasha simply laughed. "Go ahead. Get in the pilot's seat. I will be right behind you." She started up the first simulation, a simple exercise to take off, and then land, the Quinnjet from the Triskellion's hangar. Natasha instructed Anna on how to turn on the engines, how to check to make sure the systems were ready, and how to lift off. Anna had to repeat each step aloud, then actually do it.

As it turns out, taking off was fairly straight forward. As for landing... well, Natasha was right.

Her first crash was pretty spectacular.

Then they would study exactly where she went wrong.

* * *

(Hey folks. I've been rereading my series over the last few days... and there's some pretty bad mistakes, and I find different ones each time I reread it. Can I ask a favor if you've made it this far in the series? Pick a random chapter, and reread it to spot any errors. With any luck, I will be doing a massive editing attack on the entire Cryomancy series over the next few days. I'd love to have a bit of help, and a second Beta reader wouldn't hurt. :)

-TZ )


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